James Arthur Archive

As we look forward to updating the Ploughshares blog for the new year, we’re also looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. Our roundups explore the archives and gather past posts around a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. This week

As we look forward to updating the Ploughshares blog for the new year, we’re also looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. Our roundups explore the archives and gather past posts around a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. This week

Guest post by James Arthur Between the ages of 18 and 24, I did consider myself to be a writer, though I wouldn’t have known whether to call myself a poet, novelist, screenwriter, literary critic, or playwright, and I wrote almost nothing. My occasional literary effort fizzled out after

Guest post by James Arthur Somehow I never got around to taking my driver’s test. I make various excuses for not having a license (I grew up in a city with a subway, I’m doing my part for the environment, I have bad eyesight, cars are expensive, gas is

Guest post by James Arthur During the last few years I’ve been lucky enough to have some opportunities to travel, and not surprisingly, the places I’ve visited have begun showing up in my poems. In fact, these days when I sit down to write, I usually begin by flipping

Guest post by James Arthur Several years ago, I had a brief, obsessive relationship with Winged Migration, a 98-minute documentary about birds, and I went to see it three times in theaters around Seattle. To my outrage, every time I saw the movie, there were people in the audience

Guest post by James Arthur I’d like to think that although poetic styles change, as they should, the themes of poetry are more durable: that poets will keep writing love poems, for example, as long as romantic love exists, and writing elegies as long as there is death, because

Three for three: James starts today as our final Get Behind the Plough blogger for the Winter 2009-10 issue! What better way to kick back on a Friday afternoon? As always, read. Savor. Leave comments. “The Dead Poets Society” Guest post by James Arthur I sometimes feel self-conscious when